Warstories: Player vs. Player at the table.

This is the third installment of a series titled Warstories, which consists of short post meant to inspire discussion and dialogue amongst DM’s. Warstories deal with the many different issues that come up in a D&D game from time to time, and tend to affect Dungeon Masters in particular.

I had an unfortunate situation to deal with in my game recently: inter-party conflict. It wasn’t the type of verbal cheap shots that are sometimes traded at the table, nor was it a simple argument about whether to kill or not an NPC. It was an all out “I’m dropping a daily, action point, and dropping another daily, and if he goes down I coup de grace him” type argument.

Now, you could say that as a DM, I shouldn’t have let the problem they were having escalate to the point of PC murder. I agree to an extent, but I feel that a DM needs to have a certain “hands off”approach in regards to how the party interacts with each other in order to maintain the feeling of free will. Could I have brought in some town guards in the middle of the fight in a darkened alley? Maybe. But that would be too much of a “hand of God” approach to the situation. I felt I had no choice but to let it play out at the table and let the chips fall where they may.

After the game ended, and both ended up dead, (the PC who killed first was then killed by another party member in retaliation during one of the encounters of the night) I stayed up thinking about it for a bit and realized a few things. One, it’ll take a strong group to come back from this. Even though it is a game, tempers were flaring, and insults were traded amongst the real people behind the PC’s. That can’t be a good thing, as some of the chemistry in my group is already a little flimsy at best. Second, no matter what, meta-gaming and the issue of trust will play a role with whatever new PC is introduced by the affected players in this mess. Of that I have no doubt, and I’m not looking forward to that. Third, I need to be a dicky DM and stop things before they escalate. The laissez-faire attitude cost some people a good time last night, screwed my plans for the evening, and left people feeling like they wasted 3 hours of their evening when they could have been home with their kids.

A party divided can't be a good thing.

D&D is a game of heroic fantasy, and killing your party members and sneaking around the party doing your own things are not heroic acts. That’s not really the type of game I’m interested in running, not when my D&D time is so limited due to real life. So how did I handle it, after the fact? Well, my PC’s got an email from me basically calling them out and saying that if that’s the game they’d like to play, they can find another DM, because I’m not running that. I have zero interest in balancing a party’s dislike for each other, whether fictional or real. It’s not my thing, and I won’t do it or tolerate it anymore. When a player heads towards that, he or she is being disrespectful towards the DM and everyone else at the table.

There are, of course, groups that enjoy this stuff. Good for them, this doesn’t apply to you if you enjoy running games like what I’m describing. So I ask more experienced DM’s, how have you handled such situations? How did your group deal with the aftermaths? Was the table the same afterward? I look forward to your comments.

I have been DM as well as a player in similar situations and completely agree that it is a large detriment to the party. For our group it always seemed to revolve around on particular person. I mean, I am not going to lie, to develop plot, I at one point keel hauled a fellow PC, but it was all in good fun and most importantly he knew it. It sometimes boils down to players attacking one another when tempers flair but the DM is usually the one that prevents it from getting to players dying. It mostly stops at falling unconscious at the most.

I haven’t had to deal with much of this sort of thing recently, but it was a major downfall of my early RPG days. Nowadays, a far as I’m concerned, the combat rules don’t apply to PvP attacks. If a player wants to attack another player, that’s fine, he can do so, but no dice are rolled. The target gets to determine the effects of the attack. If he retaliates, his target gets the same option. If this goes back and forth for a while, or there’s an in-character argument that goes on too long, I’ll roll a die to pick which side wins – but the losing side gets to describe the victory.

Uh, in theory. Like I said, I haven’t had the misfortune of having to resort to this. Once I had a player who wanted to play an orc, who joined the party mid-adventure, and in fact mid-fight. The halfling rogue thought that maybe it would make sense for him to attack a strange, armed orc, but I asked them to come up with a reason they were satisfied with that the could avoid a fight. It was a strange situation, but it might have saved that session.

The game broke down half way through the night, and the player who’s character got killed was packing up to leave (he was rather upset). I suggested that we all go to my local pub, have a few drinks and talk about what happened. I had to use a little arm twisting, threats, etc, but I managed to get everyone together.

I think discussing the problems away from the game table puts everyone at ease. By the end of the night the 2 players involved in the majority of the PvP were have lots of fun describing exactly when and where there attacks failed. (ie. I would so have had you if I didn’t miss when we were fighting on the staircase, etc…)

And if you can everyone to agree to continue playing, start a new campaign. Your current one will have too much “Meta-game” going on for the players to effectivly “put it behind them”

I agree with Zarthan. Get everyone together for a few drinks outside of the game (or invite the group together for a board game night), and hash it out a bit. Maybe one guy was adamant that despite how he feels about another person, he was acting in character (‘It’s what my guy would do, not me.’). It could likely be some missed cues and miscommunication that got their feathers all in a ruffle. You need to start this bitch session off though, by restating you don’t want to run a game with people at each other’s throats. Then let them open up. Make sure everyone listens.

Second point is that we all play D&D. We all like the hobby. So we should all be able to play with each other, right? Wrong. As much as we like to think we could sit down with everyone, this game has a huge social component. Maybe what happened was simply an outburst of how much these 2 guys can’t stand each other. In that case, cut your losses and not invite player A back to the game. If your entire group is split between A and B, you likely will see a major shift in who’ll be around in a few weeks.

Groups add and drop players all the time. Folks just have to accept they may not like playing with someone (while outside the game, they could be a great person to hang out with). Don’t get to worked up over this.

I allow PvP situations only when the group is an agreement on that PvP is suited to the situation. Otherwise I simply say they cant do ‘that’. If they disagree and dont accept the call I tell them I hear a piano.

If they keep uncooperative the piano hits them for massive damage and kills their character. They know when I mention a piano they are pushing my patience and I am not known as a patient person.

I also use this for PC’s that insist on mudering vital NPC’s, beeing generally distruptive and annoying.

Tensions in the party can be a GREAT source of drama but it requires cooperation and acceptance of the situation from all involved players. If people are not comfortable with it and other players keep pushing a DM should try to intervine I believe.

Yeah, there has to be a point where the game is stopped and some metagaming comes in. I’m all for stories rolling organically from the interactions of the PCs but I think, when it comes to tempers and egos and all of that, everyone needs to step back and ask why they’re doing it.

I had a player that made a habit of backstabbing and double-dealing the other players in our group, and when called on it, she repeatedly fell back on “Well that’s what my character would do. I’m just acting in character.”

We need to keep in mind that what our characters WOULD do shouldn’t necessarily be what our characters DO. This is heroic fantasy, and we’re all here to have a good time. Trying to claim “realism” by saying that’s what a character would do is simply a cop out, and a justification for thuggish behavior.

Personally I’ve never really had much PVP in any game I’ve played. I’ve even played the more dickish characters that other party members wanted to kill, but we never quite got there.

Thinking back on it, as a player I would have wanted the DM to allow it, I wouldn’t have wanted my character to die but if the two characters honestly could not resolve their differences (and trust me they tried) and it resulted in a who got the drop on the other then it would have come down to who won the dice rolls.

I would have been sad if I lost my character, and I’m sure so would the other player if he lost his. But we both would have been playing our characters and were in agreement on letting the chips fall where they may. Personally I think inter party conflict if handled correctly can be quite interesting.

I will also say that I disagree with telling the players that your not interested in playing that type of game and telling them to find another DM, it’s a bit off putting. I understand you do not have the desire to deal with it but I think it could have been resolved in a better manner. I do agree with the suggestions other have made about talking it over away from the game table. I’m sure a good solution can be made.

I disagree with the “drop a piano on them”/town guards philosophy. You can’t fix an out-of-game problem in game. Although it might be a good idea to have an encounter prepared so you can yell “Stampede!” when things start to get dicey.

I haven’t run into the situation before, but it occurs to me the best way to resolve a dispute between two PCs is to set up a system where the PC’s stats do the talking and prevent it from escalating to the meta-game level.

For example a lawful good paladin is arguing with good aligned rogue over whether or not a grave that contains a certain magical item. The rouge could attempt a diplomacy check against the Paladin’s will save, in an attempt to reason with the Paladin that the item benefits the greater good. The Paladin could make Intimidation/Diplomacy against the Rouge’s will save. It might be able to resolve disputes before the PC kill each other.

I’ve never tried it before, but who knows, a system like that might work.

This is exactly what I had in mind when I wrote my contribution to the RPG Blog Carnival, “Morality: Behind the Scenes”.

You took the right step telling the players that it wasn’t on, but I personally think you took it too late. It’s better to stop these conflicts in their tracks rather than try to repair the damage afterwards, hence why I recommend taking the discussion meta at the first available opportunity (ie. before or as soon as someone draws a weapon).

PS. Of all the things to attack another PC over, returning an NPC’s item!

PPS. One of the fundamental rules that my current DM plays by is that you can argue with other PCs as much as you want (and we do), but the minute you attack them, your PC becomes an NPC and you’re rolling a new character.

It’s then up to the DM what the outcome of the attack is because the DM is controlling the attacking NPC.

PPPS. @Newbie: I hope it all works out for you, but it’s gonna be hard to pull this group back together. The first PC death was bad enough, but the later retaliation (particularly as it came in the middle of an encounter) is likely to have fractured group unity pretty badly.

If you do mansge to get your players back together, I think you all need to sit down and have a roundtable about the games meta-morality. What is and isn’t acceptable, and how to handle intra-party conflict from a metagame perspective.

I heard a few other people mention what they or their GM would do in this situation. The reason they know this is because of some level of pre existing social contract, whether official or not.

And that is what I would take out of this post and the resultant responses. It really helps to give the players the lowdown before the group plays. I know of a number of DM’s who actually have preprinted ‘codes of conduct’, but bringing it up the first session works as well.

Reasons like these are why i left 3.5 edition. See, i like to play evil characters, ones that look out for themselves above all else, not slaughter children for the fun of it. But i dont act evil, so in 3.5, id get detect evil’d by every pally that joined any game id be in, and instantly be flagged as evil, and overwhelmed before i knew it, before doing anything anyone could be considered evil. You may say thats the group you played with, and that is partially it. Causing party divisions is never an easy task to deal with, especially when its in character. My new party isnt opposed to me being evil, I tend to play the “house” type character. Sure he’s an asshole, but he disarms the traps, unlocks the doors when you need to, so you keep him around despite his brash additude.

in a 4.0 game i was playing i had a chaotic Evil barbarian who while fighting in the forest lit a dire bear on fire burning almost the whole forest down. at the time i thought it would be really cool to have a raging flaming Dire Bear trying to take vengence on me. while the encouter became really cool trying to dodge the bear and avoid the flames to reach a lake that would offer safty once we got there i was symultanously jumped by two of the other players and murdered about an hour into a 4 hour night. luckly one of the other players dident show up and i got to play their character but it was a bumer to get killed for following your allingment…. i was permitted to make a new charater though and it wil be introdised in the next game session. thre wirdest part is that burning down the forest dident do anything overtly bad the town nearby dident get burned, all the animals in the encounter escaped and we got a free ride to the next aria without any problem. man i almost diden’t want to come back and keep playing after that.

My last campaign was Star Wars Saga Edition. One of the players was a smuggler with a knack for slicing and going into the crimelord prestige class. Well he was siphoning credits from the rich noble in the group to actually do some good things with that money since the noble, who was mandalorian was throwing his weight around but reluctant to help the Galactic Alliance (Legacy Era)

The smuggler kept taking some some unwarranted heat from the noble, no one in the group knew that the smuggler was taking credits even though they were all being played by the smugglers very own droid.

Well the smuggler decides he wants a 2nd character to take a break from the watchful eyes of the noble and his protector friend and makes a Jedi, tells me to run the smuggler since he does not think he will go back to him.

Well it so happened that event seemed to make the noble player more bold and decided to call out his smuggling friends droid as a criminal. The droid makes a run for it and actually succeeds at kidnapping two of the players. When word of the kidnapping gets to them he orders the now NPC smuggler to the brig. Even though the droid tells them hey my master was a dupe, I follow a different master and played you as fools.

Well this just angered the player more and he wanted the smuggler thrown in carbonite. On the way down in the lift, I have the smuggler start talking trash as per how he would be played. This angered the mando soldier and who ended up killing the smuggler for threatening his boss. Needless to say I could have stopped it but I was downright mad they took it this far because he was now an NPC and they could act on their desires.

I do not mind rivalries in the party but the killing of a player even one turned into an NPC was downright wrong. My fix was to say the smuggler had a replica droid and was warned by the Jedi there was betrayal from friends. Sneaky but this guy had actually hooked up the party and helped keep them alive more than once.

If I want that kind of game, I have a friend who is an adversarial GM who views games as something to win, it is fun to a point until the party attacks start.

I guess my group has always done lots of PvP at the drop of a hat. We seem to think of it as natural at this point and I suppose it is, given that many of the PCs have vastly different allignments and goals. Not to mention one player (who eventually decided he didn’t fit well with the group and left) always insisted on playing these total psychos who started shooting NPCs and other players whenever he got a bit bored.

It certainly hasn’t wrecked our group, and I think if anything it’s better roleplaying than just having conflicts miraculously not happen when they should. But probably it’s good to at least make sure everyone knows PvP will be allowed beforehand and to at least make sure people have reasonable, in-character motivations for it.

I have used linking the characters mortality together. “The goddess (insert name here) decends and (add dramatic effects here). Your bickering has caused me to loose a wager with (insert name of other god or powerful being here). From here forward your essences will be eternaly and mortally linked.” Bolth characters add their HP together for a total score. when one character recieves damage the other does as well. If one dies the other dies a s well and they bolth roll up a new character.

One of my players tries to steal stuff from the other PC’s.
it’s a pain in the butt, and it leads to a LOT of fighting between the PC’s and the actual players themselves. I noticed that it happens more at the beginning and ends of games, because they get distracted easier at those times.

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